Chapter, Quebec and La Francophonie: the Province as Global Player by Jody Neathery-Castro, UNO faculty member

What is Quebec's relationship with the rest of Canada? Is there a distinct Quebecois culture? What is Quebec's place on the international stage? These are questions editors Stephan Gervais, Christopher Kirkey, and Jarrett Rudy continue to ask in the second edition of Quebec Questions: QuebecStudies for the Twenty-first Century. Bringing together expert contributors, the text examines the province through historical, social, cultural, political, and economic perspectives. Building on the strength of the previous edition, new chapters discuss the law and legal traditions, visual arts and sport in Quebec, and Quebecois perspectives on federalism and sovereignty. An expansive pedagogical program - including thoughtful introductions, timelines, biographies, case studies, primary source documents, critical thinking questions, and a new glossary - makes this a thoughtful, engaging, and passionate exploration of la belle province.

This book looks at the role that civil society organizations play in dealing with conflict and violence. The authors argue that in most of the prevalent conceptualizations the conflict dimension of civil society is either downplayed or inadequately addressed. They contend that the ability to deal with conflict is at the heart of organized civil society; in the political process, one of civil society's key functions is to express and mediate between different interests, thus contributing to political decision-making.

The chapters draw on detailed, empirical data from the CIVICUS Civil Society Index - a unique comparative data-set drawn from 25 countries, which has not previously been made publicly available. It examines the different ways violence has been manifested in civil societies, the meaning of violent protest and the impact of security legislation that might hinder the mediating efforts of civil society. The book offers a sophisticated comparison between conflict and post-conflict countries and an analysis of the role of civil society in conflict resolution, reconciliation and transitional justice.

Chapter 11, Chabot vs. Driehaus in Ohio’s First Congressional District: The Rematch in the City of Seven Hills, co-authored by Randall E. Adkins and Gregory A. Petrow, UNO faculty members.

After Barack Obama’s historic 2008 victory, Democrats were riding high. But a number of tough fights on policy initiatives, coupled with an economy struggling to recover, put Democrats in a difficult position leading up to the 2010 congressional elections. With nearly all the electoral gains Democrats made during 2006 and 2008 now lost and the House returned to Republican control, this is one of the most dramatic shifts in congressional power in history.

Examining a sample of congressional campaigns waged during this important election provides readers with an account of how Republicans were able to make such impressive gains and how Democrats were unable to stem this tide. Adkins and Dulio provide a clear explanation of the macro trends in this election cycle, followed by twelve in depth and fascinating case studies of House and Senate toss up races involving seats held by endangered Democratic incumbents. Framed by a common set of questions and topics—so that they are singing the same song in different voices—each chapter focuses on the micro-level effects active in the individual campaigns. Furthermore, the editors discuss how the 2010 cycle fits into the existing literature on campaigns and elections, conclusions about what we learned in 2010 by addressing these competitive states and districts, and speculation on what might be ahead in 2012.

In addition, the companion website provides instructors with useful teaching tools, including sample assignments and dynamic PowerPoint slides with graphs and videos.

Approaching an uncertain future without Fidel Castro, and still reeling from a downturn at the end of the cold war, Cuba must act decisively to improve its economy and living conditions. One of the major challenges facing the impoverished island nation is securing access to energy resources that are sufficient to meet the needs of its revitalization and development goals. What steps can Cuba take to achieve both short- and long-term energy sustainability and self-sufficiency? In this timely analysis, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado and his colleagues answer that question.

Cuba's Energy Future sets the geostrategic context within which Cuba is operating. The book provides an overview of the evolving relations among Caribbean states and explains why Cuba and its longtime nemesis the United States should look for ways to cooperate on developing energy resources. The possible role of oil companies is explored, as is Cuba's energy relationship with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

The second section of Cuba's Energy Future features economic and technical appraisals, economic projections, and trends affecting Cuba's energy needs, including oil and natural gas potential, the country's antiquated electric power sector, and the role of biofuels such as sugarcane ethanol. The concluding section focuses on the conditions necessary for, and the mutual benefits of, greater cooperative engagement with the United States.

Quebec Questions: Quebec Studies for the Twenty-First Century is a contributed, multidisciplinary text that examines Quebec history from social, cultural, and political perspectives. Editors Jarrett Rudy, Stephan Gervais, and Christopher Kirkey bring together experts from a variety of fields to create a contributed text on the history of Quebec that is the first of its kind in the English language. Much more than a mere survey text, Quebec Questions engages students with questions such as is Quebec distinct?, what makes Quebec distinct?, what is its relationship with the rest ofCanada?, and what is its place on the world stage? In addition to the editors' introductions, which provide a framework and context for each of the text's parts, an expansive pedagogical program in every chapter, including a timeline, a biographical sketch of a key figure, a profile of a significant event, critical-thinking questions, a select bibliography, and relevant websites for further exploration. The broad and inclusive format of Quebec Questions will ensure its appropriateness for the growing number of courses examining Quebec through a variety of lenses.

During the 2008 elections, nowhere was change more anticipated than in the House and Senate. Going into Election Day, most analysts predicted a large majority of Democratic wins in both chambers. However, while many Republicans lost and Democrats came away with a clear majority, some of the most vulnerable managed to hang on and win reelection. Cases in Congressional Campaigns illustrates how embattled incumbents defended their turf in such a difficult year for Republican candidates, the Republican Party, and the Republican brand. It focuses on how selected congressional incumbents "played defense"―successfully or not―in an election cycle that was dominated by the theme and message of change.

Each chapter is written by political scientists on the ground and familiar with the district they are analyzing. Analysis of broader trends from the 2008 cycle bookend the volume with Adkins and Dulio’s insightful framing. More than just a collection of case studies, this book offers a common framework for understanding who won, who lost, and why. In addition, the companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415873888 provides instructors with useful teaching tools, including sample assignments, dynamic PowerPoint slides, graphs, and links to relevant YouTube clips.

This project sought to expand voter outreach and mobilization of new registered and Latino voters through a series of activities to be undertaken in winter of 2007 leading up to the 2008 General Election in the greater Omaha metropolitan area. Following the successful development of a voter mobilization project undertaken in the 2006 election cycle, this project conducted a series of door-to-door canvassing activities utilizing University of Nebraska at Omaha students to distribute nonpartisan voter information, and engage in “get out the vote” activities with new Latino registered voters in Ward 4 of Douglas County, Nebraska and among Southeast Omaha’s predominately minority communities. As of 9/1/2008, there were approximately 10,000 newly registered This project sought to expand voter outreach and mobilization of new registered and Latino voters through a series of activities to be undertaken in winter of 2007 leading up to the 2008 General Election in the greater Omaha metropolitan area. Following the successful development of a voter mobilization project undertaken in the 2006 election cycle, this project conducted a series of door-to-door canvassing activities utilizing University of Nebraska at Omaha students to distribute nonpartisan voter information, and engage in “get out the vote” activities with new Latino registered voters in Ward 4 of Douglas County, Nebraska and among Southeast Omaha’s predominately minority communities. As of 9/1/2008, there were approximately 10,000 newly registered voters (NRV’s ) in Douglas County. We estimated that there may be as many as 3,000 of these new voters in Legislative Districts 5 and 7 (an area approximately from the Missouri River to 72nd Street and from the downtown Omaha area down into Ralston and Bellevue).

This completely rewritten classic text features many new examples, insights and topics including mediational, categorical, and multilevel models. Substantially reorganized, this edition provides a briefer, more streamlined examination of data analysis. Noted for its model-comparison approach and unified framework based on the general linear model, the book provides readers with a greater understanding of a variety of statistical procedures. This consistent framework, including consistent vocabulary and notation, is used throughout to develop fewer but more powerful model building techniques. The authors show how all analysis of variance and multiple regression can be accomplished within this framework. The model-comparison approach provides several benefits:

-It strengthens the intuitive understanding of the material thereby increasing the ability to successfully analyze data in the future-It provides more control in the analysis of data so that readers can apply the techniques to a broader spectrum of questions-It reduces the number of statistical techniques that must be memorized-It teaches readers how to become data analysts instead of statisticians.

Twenty-first-century society faces profound challenges, and the future seems anything but secure. The rapid advance of technology has far outpaced mankind's moral and religious development. There is greater material wealth now than in past centuries, yet poverty remains an international problem. Wars persist and global peace seems increasingly unattainable as terrorism and civil strife become more prevalent. Numerous forms of entertainment made possible by modern industrialization and technology divert attention away from the things that really matter and invert the objective hierarchy of values. Underlying all these threats to the foundations of civilization one can find one or another theoretical conception of man and human freedom.

This volume presents a rich and diverse collection of essays on the theoretical foundations of human freedom. From several distinct perspectives, the authors examine various aspects of the deeper anthropological questions at the root of a number of critical social challenges confronting modernity. Readers interested in educational theory, church and state, the nature of love and friendship, questions of authority and the common good, law and human rights, and virtue theory and the various types of freedom will find this collection of special interest.

Primary source materials are a great way for students to experience firsthand a historic event, to more fully understand a pivotal actor or figure, or to explore legislation or a judicial decision. Students leave these readings better prepared to grapple with secondary sources. In fact, they can often support a different interpretation or more critically engage with analysis. This new volume with 45 documents that include speeches, court cases, letters, diary entries, excerpts from autobiographies, treaties, legislation, regulations and reports, documentary photographs, ad stills, public opinion polls, transcripts, and press releases is a great starting point for any parties and elections course. Careful editing, pithy headnotes, and discussion questions all enhance this useful reader.

The natural alliance between service learning and Women's studies lies in a shared pedagogy, one which draws on lived experience to access and create knowledge. Central to both is an emphasis on the critical link between knowledge and practice for student learning. Women's studies pedagogy, like service learning pedagogy, views experience as important as a source of learning, but also as something one must subject to reflection and analysis to expose its situatedness. In so doing, both feminist and service learning pedagogy ask students to become self- conscious participants in the process of knowledge construction and to become "aware of the limitations of their own experience and perspectives and therefore value the perspectives of others.

The common assumption that Darwinism and conservatism are mutually inconsistent is now fiercely debated on the right. A number of conservative thinkers argue that evolutionary biology can replace religion as the source of morality while scientifically confirming conservative public policy. Illuminating this crucial but confusing debate, a new book by Carson Holloway explains why Darwinian conservatism is both illusory and dangerous.

Until recently, the obvious conservative response to Darwinism was hostility because of its atheism and materialism. Prominent scientific writers, particularly those working in fields informed by Darwinian biology, have been contemptuous in their dismissal of religion, calling it not only false but harmful. Too often the debate has degenerated into mere name-calling, the epithets "fundamentalist" and "atheist" flying back and forth.

Lately, however, such authoritative conservative thinkers as James Q. Wilson and Francis Fukuyama have argued that evolutionary biology confirms the objective reality of human nature—a bedrock conservative principle—as well as religion does. Conservatives, then, need no longer insist on religious belief as a source of public morality.

But can a society really dispense with religion as the source of morality? Can the Darwinian account of human nature lend scientific credibility to the moral and political positions of conservatives? Consulting the great philosopher of democratic conservatism, Alexis de Tocqueville, Holloway asks whether religion is necessary for a healthy democracy and probes the possibility of a Darwinian alternative. He concludes that Darwinian conservatism, and Darwinism generally, cannot sustain respect for human rights or provide for the stability of the family and society. In the face of Darwinism’s moral failure, religion remains an essential support for a decent and free democracy.

The passing of John Paul II provoked questions about the Pope, particularly in his relation to modernity. Was he opposed to the tenets of modernity, as some critics claimed? Or did he accommodate modernity in a way no Pope ever had, as his champions asserted? In The Way of Life, Carson Holloway examines the fundamental philosophers of modernity--from Hobbes to Toqueville--to suggest that John Paul II's critique of modernity is intended not to reject, but to improve. Thus, claims Holloway, it is appropriate for liberal modernity to attend to the Pope's thought, receiving it not as the attack of an enemy but as the criticism of a candid friend.

Magnanimity and Statesmanship is a collection of papers on the virtue of Aristotelian magnanimity (or greatness of soul) and its relationship to the history of political philosophy and to the art of statesmanship. Aristotle's account of the "great-souled man" may seem somewhat alien to the sensibilities of a modern democracy. There is, after all, an inegalitarian element in the great-souled man's confidence in his moral excellence and hence in his superior worthiness to hold public office. Nevertheless, even modern democratic thinkers admit that democracy needs, at least in certain critical phases in its development, political leaders who far excel their fellow citizens in virtue and wisdom.

This book, then, traces the path of magnanimity in the history of political philosophy and examines certain statesmen in light of this virtue, all with a view to addressing the following questions: What is magnanimity, and what is its relationship to political life? Is magnanimity compatible with Christianity, or with the modern commitment to equality? Does modernity still stand in need of such a virtue? Can magnanimity flourish under modern conditions? Are there examples of political leaders whose lives exemplify this virtue and the study of whose political conduct can deepen our understanding of it?

In the fifteen years since Tipper Gore and Frank Zappa feuded over raunchy lyrics, a furious but confused debate has raged over popular music's effect on character. In a new book that shatters the assumptions of pop music's critics and defenders alike, Carson Holloway shows that music is both more dangerous and more beneficial than we think.

Conservative complaints about popular music focus on lyrics alone and appeal only to public decency and safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock's liberating ethos and deny its cultural influence. Neither side appreciates the true power of music or is willing to examine its own musical tastes.

Previous ages, Holloway finds, were not as naive as our own. Plato and Aristotle, who saw that music can awaken the soul to reason or inflame it with passion, insisted on the cultivation of temperance through musical education. Rousseau and Nietzsche likewise recognized music's power, though these modern prophets of passion encouraged precisely the sort of music that the ancients would have deplored. The curious exception to this political concern with music is found in the intervening Enlightenment-the source of American politics. In their rejection of the classical notion of "statecraft as soulcraft," Locke and his contemporaries blinded themselves to the influence of culture on the character of citizens.

Only in recent years, as pop fare has reached extremes of depravity, have some Americans-most famously Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind-begun to worry about the destructive potential of music. Bloom looked beyond lyrics to the music itself, but in his elitism failed to consider music's full moral influence. Holloway, by contrast, is sympathetic to pop's appeal, and his well-rounded study compels us to take all music seriously. What he proposes-a rediscovery of the musical wisdom of Plato and Aristotle-will completely change the way we think about music.

Power to the People analyzes energy development in Cuba both before and after the Cold War and discusses the risks and opportunities associated with the development and expansion of the Cuban energy sector. Some of the topics addressed are energy security, energy requirements, the impact of Russian assistance, international energy cooperation, American opposition to Cuban efforts and future investments.

This volume analyses the interaction of business lobbyists, consumer critics, and government officials for the first time in 20 years. It offers important new insights and revisionist views about the impact of consumer issue networks in the making of public policy in Congress during the 1980s and 1990s. It shows how consumer groups lobby Congressional committees and their leaders and staffers to reform legislation in areas of critical concern.

This text for undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics, business and government, lobbying and interest group behavior, and political sociology covers the expanding range and activities of consumer lobbyists in recent years and gives a short history of their role in Congressional decisionmaking from the Progressive and New Deal eras to the present. The study details their activities in terms of civic outcomes (campaign finance, intervenor funding, freedom of information); consumer protection (impure food, unsafe drugs, autos, toys, and household appliances); economic regulation and deregulation (airlines, financing services, trucking, and telecommunications); and highly politicized pocketbook issues (health care, tax, energy, income, and trade policies). Journalists, activists, and students of politics, business administration, and sociology will find the conclusions about consumers, businesses, and Congressional decisionmaking and the arguments for government and citizen activism arresting.